Comments on: Asking Google to remove your home from Maps Street View

By: Brough

Brough — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 16:16:28 +0000

Privacy? It is need to care regularly, I,d like to do with minimum influence of viewer such fuzzying vehicles license plates and human faces. All photoed area is public accessible that I can at it, of course, INTERIOR of homes is NOT allowed to be posted on Internet without holder’s premission.

BTW, It has likely no security concern for regular homes. more than 999 users are legistive per 1,000 users I guess. Anyone to do bad things for it is NOT depanding only photo on Google Street View.

By: mike

mike — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 14:00:00 +0000

Just like the satellite images im sure the street view is at a higher resolution, they just make it lower, but who says one day in the future or some hacker gets hold of the originals then sells them to people that are a higher resolution. Theres now way to know what resolution there at, and its an invasion of privacy. I complained to google and 2 days later it was blocked out.

By: jj

jj — Sun, 21 Sep 2008 02:41:37 +0000

You don’t own the light being reflected off of your home. Google is merely allowing that light to enter the lens of their cameras. Once that light enters the lens of their camera, THEY OWN IT!!! They own the light.

YOU HAVE NO RIGHT TO TELL THEM WHAT THEY CAN AND CANNOT DO WITH LIGHT THAT ENTERS THE LENS OF THEIR CAMERAS!!

By: ForPitysSake

ForPitysSake — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 21:21:48 +0000

No, actually you can’t magnify the imagery in Google. All you can do is “zoom,” which is useless because the imagery (at least in the U.S.) is very low resolution; you can’t zoom into a higher resolution layer, like you do with Google’s satellite maps. When you zoom in closer to the house, what you see is massive blur, just like when you try to enlarge a low res image on your photo program. With most houses in Street View, you can’t make out anything inside the windows; you can’t even make out the street numbers. You have used this service, haven’t you?

Google’s lawyers can easily demonstrate the low res imagery at trial. Google’s lawyers are likely to be very gifted. And convincing. The jury questionnaire would include questions to determine potential jurors’ comfort level with technology, so in jury selection, you may get a mix of Luddites, in-betweens, and techies, depending on the location. If the jury foreman hates technology and is influential, then I think you may be right that they would side with the plaintiff, but the reverse is true as well.

By: EK

EK — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 17:45:33 +0000

PS. Google allows for magnification of your household. You could argue that a camera lens could do the same thing, but a good lawyer would argue Google made it easier for mass “scoping” easier for the criminal to pick the easiest victim, easier for the simplest of minds to conduct illegal activity. Now Google’s lawyers will argue logistics til the sun comes up, but jurors go on gut, not logic.

By: EK

EK — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 17:31:36 +0000

Try, the first household that gets burglarized, molested, kidnapped or stalked because the perpetrator used Google street view as its resource sues Google, not for privacy issues, but for criminal or civil negligence. Then Google has to go through its crisis management plan, and explain how the CEOs of Google did not foresee the ramifications of their actions. I don’t see how a jury or judge wouldn’t find them culpable. Then comes the very costly PR campaign, to get their reputation back.

By: ForPitysSake

ForPitysSake — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 16:43:34 +0000

This is ridiculous. If you’re concerned about privacy, have Google remove the picture. But I seriously doubt that many people are scouring the Internet looking for YOUR house. I use Street View recreationally and, like someone posted above, I love to look up and down the streets of far away locations to check out the architecture. I couldn’t care less about the details and I never spend more than a few seconds looking at any one house. Trust me that very few people who use Street View use it for fun like I do. Most people are going to use it for practical reasons like checking out an area to move, or finding a new doctor’s office, or looking to see if a garage sale they plan to visit is in a good area. Remember there are now probably millions of homes pictured in Street View. What makes you think the “whole world” is interested in your little corner of the world?

Sure, there are going to be people who use Street View for opportunistic reasons. But those people will do what they do anyway. Besides, they can drive up and down your street and do a much better job of casing it that way. They can even take pictures and probably do so without anyone noticing. At least that way they’d get high resolution pictures (in the U.S. the imagery is at fairly low resolution).

Oh, and about the street people using Street View to find an empty house. You gotta be kidding me. So, street people are toting laptops around with wireless Internet access are they? Sure, they can get to it via a library computer, but how many of them do you think really do visit their libraries for purposes of getting onto the ‘net and finding empty property? They are a lot more likely to accomplish that by walking the streets. Come on! The risk isn’t great enough to outweigh the benefits of Street View.

Oh, and Crime Victim. So, you interviewed your burglar and found they used Street View to burgle your house, did you? And a stalker can find you without Street View pretty easily. If they know your address, they can find you. They don’t need Street View for that.

By: positivecreative

positivecreative — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 18:25:01 +0000

of course it’s a violation of privacy and against the law. you can’t take a photo of someones house, in australia without their permission. google is using this for commercial gain.

so therefore, you can’t do it.

class action anyone?

illegal google maps street view. illegal.

By: Mike

Mike — Sat, 13 Sep 2008 02:23:57 +0000

I live in a private neighborhood - where the streets are owned by the HOA (Home Owner’s Association). We have to pay for our own street maintenance & get no “public” funds for any of the maintenance of our neighborhood. There is a sign at the only entrance to the neighborhood which informs visitors that this is a private neighborhood.
Yet, it appears that the Google mapping people have completely ignored this - and posted street level images of all the homes in the neighborhood.
The HOA is concerned with the crime that occurs while homeowners are at work - the neighborhood is practically deserted during working hours (as can been seen on the photographs).
Do we have a right to ask them to remove these images?

By: hawk

hawk — Sat, 13 Sep 2008 01:14:31 +0000

Identity theft is also a problem, you can describe anyone’s house and address when u live half way across the world, can see number plates, and then can flip out a directory and get the last name of the people living in the house. It is quite ridiculous.